like the musical in Moulin Rouge, or, more precisely, the inverse of it. How, oh Cog, you may ask, can you be in such a despondency while still elated from the election results? And I will tell you, the secret is compartmentalization.
Part of the problem is that obsessively reading election coverage put me in the way of reading excessive economic coverage, and that, combined with the jobs that keep disappearing and the more searches that will be undoubtedly cancelled later on in the process, makes me sad that I have missed my window and now will never get a professorial job. Furthermore, that I was stupid in the extreme and dooming myself when I read all those dire predictions, starting 5 years ago, about a catastrophic crisis in capitalism and replied, to wit, "ha ha." I have always joked about being sortof lefty but still a grad student and how, when the revolution actually came, I would be first up against the wall for failing to conform to revolutionary principles, but now I see that before the catastrophe becomes revolution, the capitalist masters themselves are going to shoot me for not sufficiently conforming to their program, to wit, being rich and saying fuckall to anyone who is poorer.
And since I haven't just been reading liberal economics articles but Harvey and Davis and Jameson and Appadurai and even some Chomsky when no one else was looking, plus a steady diet of sci-fi apocalypse novels, I'm convinced that this is no recession but a resetting, and there will be no middle class anymore as we know it, at least not in America. So now I'm freaking out that I should throw over this temp job and kill and eat my cats and go live in my cousin's basement after transforming his backyard into a survival garden because it would be a safer alternative to hooking once the local economy has disintegrated down into something out of Road Warrior and really, that won't be an option if I'm competing with all the unemployed wanna-be actresses and their boob jobs, so I had better sell everything I own and head for the basement before things get bad, right? Sigh.
It's just hard to think about the job search when you keep reading stuff about how all this shit going down may be just the beginning of a prolonged and painful adjustment period, hard to think of taking a shit job as a waitress or retail to make some time to write when the unemployment rate has hit 14% and you know your town has it even higher, hard to care about finishing that damn revise and resubmit (no, I still haven't brought myself to work on it!) when you may be forcibly ejected from the profession and you don't particularly want to have one random, badly-finished article under your name if you're not going to do anything in that vein ever again.
Plus, I just had to go get my car tuned up and have a new mysterious rattle inspected, and my laptop/plug had troubles again, which they blamed on the cord having a short after they fiddled with the battery. I'm thinking it was the battery and it just was on its best behavior while they were there, but I bet it will be back to causing trouble soon and I'll need to replace it. I got a new cord at their suggestion. (PSA: generic products for Apple seem to have more problems. OTOH, cats find the original Apple hardware to be chewier and tastier.) All of these big expenses, while I can handle them, just remind me of how my rent is scheduled to go up in December and my loans start coming due then, and how I had planned to get some sort of second job to help pay for those after christmas break, and now I am depressed and thinking that some sort of dishwasher/slavery job is going to be too hard to get, never mind the hooking.
Looking on the bright side, my cat has just climbed up on my lap to purr at me and it is making me feel slightly better. Maybe I shouldn't eat them quite yet.
5 comments:
You seem to be forgetting the stealing option. Perhaps your moral compass is just maladjusted. And the boob job will surely be a requirement even for the dishwasher job soon. As for the cats, don't get fooled by their pity look. They're quite tasty a la Carbonara.
Well, don't forget, we were screwed before, too!
I take hope in observing the game of "more pessimistic than thou" that so much of the left likes to play. I'm very very respectful of people like Harvey and Davis and Jameson, but as smart as they are, predictions about a future that is, frankly, unpredictable, deserve a healthy shaker of salt. And so many people have been predicting economic apocalypse for such a long time, that (I tell myself) maybe, just maybe, they're a little bit relieved to find their predictions finally coming true (or, at least, the unhealthy glee that so many marxists have taken at the spectacle of wall street's collapse makes me look askance at people I used to trust much more). Or maybe *I'm* the one in denial.
Hmm. I have those sort of thoughts all the time. I usually end up engaging in the usual sorts of distractions: escapism, consumerism, alcohol, and denial. Then that doesn't work, I sulk. Hopefully things won't be as bad as we fear.
/comfort
Maybe you can teach the cats to catch mice and bugs? Both are quite good protein, I've read.
if you learn how to train your cats to hunt for you, let me know. the red rocket is only good at catching lady bugs, and there's not much sustenance there.
i was just saying in the car monday night to soldier boy that i fear i've missed my window, too. that i'm fucked and will never end up with a job and have to do something drastic like join the army. and alas, they probably wouldn't take me.
oh damn it all to hell, eh?
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